


All That I Am Asking

by ermengarde



Series: And it won't be hard to do (A.K.A. Adam wants your braaaaainz) [4]
Category: Adam Lambert - Fandom, adam lambert (singer)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-12
Updated: 2010-08-12
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:32:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ermengarde/pseuds/ermengarde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Neil's resorted to using lists and poking around in Adam's cosmetics in an attempt to work out what the hell is going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That I Am Asking

**Author's Note:**

> Familiarity with the previous three parts is probably useful, but it's not completely imperative. Adam's a zombie (but not undead), Neil's his wrangler, Tommy's a chew toy, Brad has some strange kinks and Sutan's not telling Neil anything.

Neil had now seen approximately nine thousand zombie movies in his quest to find out what was going on with Adam - eight thousand, nine hundred and ninety five of which were the worst movies ever made. _Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane_ was his current movie-by-which-all-others-are-judged (seriously, _Snakes on a Plane_'s only redeeming feature was Samuel L. Jackson, so remaking it without either Sam _or_ snakes was never going to be a winner, even with the charming addition of zombies). Neil was a slightly concerned that his capacity for judgment had been permanently destroyed, because he now got bored if someone wasn't decapitated within the first fifteen minutes of a movie, but Tommy agreed with him on most of his choices and he was the only other person in the lounge who didn't mutter braaaaainz every few minutes, so... majority opinion rules.

He _had_ wondered if there was some school, somewhere, that would fund his extensive study of the medium (if you could get a PhD in _The effect of basketball weight on basketball free-throw shooting_, then why not zombies? He'd have been very grateful for an academic paper to read on it all) but then Tommy had come to him with a slightly worrying rash on his neck and Neil had forgotten to pursue appropriate funding in the resulting soggy-headed panic (it had turned out that glittery-de-zombified-Adam had eaten tomatoes, which had gotten into his spit, which had gotten onto Tommy's neck - in fairly alarming quantities - and Tommy had some kind of long forgotten skin-only allergy that he didn't remember anything about for several distressing days during which Adam mostly chewed on Neil.). Now Neil just made very specific rider requests in Adam's name (no more raw tomatoes for the diva rock star. And more beer, too, please) and he had Tommy's mom on speed-dial so he could call her immediately there was the slightest sign of skin-reddening.

He had tried, initially, only to watch the movies when Adam was occupied elsewhere, but that left several hours a day when he was reduced to watching _Velvet Goldmine_ over and over again and there was really only so much of that he could take. Tommy was pretty good at laughing at the super _super_ crappy ones, too, and Adam didn't really pay a lot of attention to what was on the screen unless it was sparkly, bright, or covered in glitter so he figured he wasn't risking Adam suffering any more mental trauma than Adam's whole zombie escapade had already caused _him_.  
He had taken to writing extensive lists about everything (Monte had laughed his ass off about the list of rules until he was left zombie-sitting for a couple of hours whilst Neil and Lane tried to calm down a traumatized member of the crew who Adam had tried to nom on (thank God for confidentiality clauses. And bribes). Neil had never worked out quite what happened to Monte, but he found his post-it with rule eight:_If you can't hear the nomming, the zombie's up to something_ heavily underlined) because there had to be some kind of behavior pattern the lists would expose even without any input from Brad (who was theoretically talking to him again, but mostly only to tell him he needed a haircut, better fashion sense and improved sparkle). He figured he could maybe work out some theories about what Adam had done, ask Brad some pointed questions around the topic, and gauge the accuracy of his theories by Brad's reaction.

`Ways In Which Zombies Are Created:`

♮ Radiation (very popular in the 1970s).  
♮ Chemical Poisoning (gas, something in the water, explosions, whatever seems to be in the news - so something including oil-spillage is probably in production).  
♮ Viruses (including special subset: genetically engineered viruses, see also: stuff in the news. G.M. crops somehow creating a virus are a particularly confusing genre).  
♮ Magic (generally in offensive Voodoo-style crossovers).  
♮ Something from Space  


"Neil, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?"

"I knew you liked talking to me really, Brad."

"Well, you make the rest of my day so nice in comparison."

Neil tried very hard not to growl, Brad had been very clear on the purposes of growling and how much he sounded like Adam when he did it, and _yuck_. He was _never_ getting that image out of his head.

Brad sighed. "Neil, you called? Was there a purpose or have you just gotten that bored of talking to Adam's chew toy already?"

"Play nice, Brad. Tommy's a good guy."

"I'm sure he is. Once you get over his fetish for being eaten."

"I've heard how much you like..."

"Okay, okay! I'll stop."

"Brad, are you scared of what Adam's told me about you?"

"No."

Neil snorted and filed Brad's reaction under _useful guru leverage_.

"So, wrangler-boy, you called?"

"I, uhh, got my hair cut."

"And you wanted to tell me? Oh Neil, I'm so proud! Stick with me and I'll have you fit for human company in two, three years, tops."

"Yeah, yeah. I've _seen_ what you think style is, Brad. You'll have me dressing up like an astronaut or something."

"Well I do like a man in uniform."

Neil laughed loudly enough that Adam broke off his nomming to make a slightly disgruntled noise. "I'm not sure that a space suit counts as a uniform, Brad.... unless you've got some kind of space-fetish, too?"

"Nope, I leave the nerdy stuff up to you Lamberts. I'm only interested in one kind of heavenly body..."

"And your astrology shit."

"Yeah, but you don't mess up a good comeback, and really Neil, space camp was D.U.L.L.."

"By which you mean it lacked eye candy."

"Hey! I am totally not that shall.. okay, I am totally that shallow, but I'm into cute geeks, I kinda need to find one to fix my piece of shit computer, and there was not _one_ in the _whole_ camp. It was traumatic."

"Well I wouldn't want to make you relive your childhood trauma."

"'preciate it. Now, your haircut; tweet me a picture so I can grade it for you."

So, probably not something from space, if Brad was as involved as he said he was, and Tommy didn't seem to be affected so the chances of it being any kind of virus were really small, so that left radiation (seemed like it might be more permanent than this was supposed to be), chemical poisoning (or, well, drugging, probably, as it was deliberate) or _magic_ (no. Just. No).

They finally had two whole days off together with nothing to do, the management were positively gleeful at the ticket and merch sales Adam was getting and put up surprisingly little protest when Neil demanded time off to relax on Adam's behalf, and that meant two nights in the same hotel with nowhere to go, which meant a _suite_ in which to wrangle Adam and do a little more investigating.  
First though, Neil was going to get a real, full night's sleep. The suite had a security lock on it and un-Zombie Adam couldn't even work those without help, so Neil figured that he was safe to completely relax and trust that the lock would stop him escaping even if a chair under the handle of Adam's bedroom door and the distraction of Tommy in a bed approximately the size of Adam's first apartment didn't (Tommy had ordered extra pillows from room service and had set himself up comfortably to watch TV while Adam nommed on his head. How Tommy was going to persuade Adam to change the channel from the scrap booking shopping channel was entirely his own business. _"Shiny, Tommy, bedazzle. Want."_...Neil kinda hoped that Tommy had grabbed Adam's credit card and was ordering everything Adam pointed at; if Adam couldn't open his door when he finally got home for boxes of crafting shit it would entirely serve him right).

  
Sleep was completely _awesome_ and when the sound of piano music woke Neil up sometime the next day he was pretty much sure that Adam's whole zombie thing had to be drug related, and he was probably topping up through some of his cosmetics - he had to be, really, or Sutan's glittery stuff wouldn't work. Neil was officially a genius, he'd just needed more than an hour's uninterrupted sleep to figure it all out.

Tommy was playing something that sounded remarkably like the soundtrack to _Dead and Breakfast_ on the piano and Adam was sitting on the floor by his feet, mouthing at his own wrist.  
"Mornin..."  
"Shhh, Tommy play." Adam glared at him.  
_Okay then_, never let it be said that Neil couldn't respect artistic creativity. Tommy had obviously ordered breakfast (or possibly lunch) from room service before starting his performance, so Neil fixed himself a plate very, very quietly and sat down to enjoy the music with a little selection of meat and fruit (it was okay, he'd get his carbs later, from beer).  
Adam seemed to be quite happy watching Tommy play, nomming quietly in tune on his arm, and Tommy was probably enjoying the opportunity to dry out, and as long as Neil didn't make any loud noises (so accidentally knocking his plate onto the floor and smashing it was right out) they completely ignored him. Neil grabbed his spiral-bound notepad and started checking through the various PAing-related lists he had there (if you'd told him before all of this started that keeping track of his brother's laundry would be the _good_ part of his job...) - he'd already checked everything off when it had been brought in from the bus and dumped in the suite the night before, but if anyone asked why he was looking through Adam's stuff it would give him an excellent excuse. Whatever it was that Adam was taking was probably somewhere in his room.

Of course, between them Adam and Tommy had more or less every cosmetic product known to man and most of those contained a whole bunch of made up chemicals (what the flying fuck was a lipopeptide and what did it stimulate?), and even with a whole lot of googling Neil had no idea which were legitimate and which might not be (there were a bunch of little green vials that looked kinda hopeful, until he discovered that they were part of a $500 facial kit and nearly smashed them all on the floor in shock). He was going to have to crack Sutan...

"Sutan."  
"Shouldn't you be wrangling your brother right about now?" Sutan had answered his door, purple cocktail in hand, wearing very tiny shorts and a dramatic robe that had way too much fabric for it not to close in the middle.  
"He's watching Tommy play the piano, it seems to soothe him or something."  
"Hmm." Sutan pulled his mouth into a thoughtful pout and nodded. "Interesting, okay then," he turned and swept back towards his bathroom where an alarming array of cosmetics were competing for dominance. Distressingly Neil could now identify about 50% of them. "What brings you down to see the poor lowly souls not gifted with a suite?"  
"The insurance needs a list of all the medications people are taking, in case it's changed since the start of the tour, and I don't know what Adam's..."  
Sutan snorted. "Nice try, Neil, Adam's not taking anything that the insurance people need to know about."  
"So he is taking something?"  
Sutan looked at Neil through the mirror and narrowed his eyes.  
Neil grinned at him "That's all I needed to know."


End file.
